With Eric gone, we've got a bit of a void here. I don't have the time or inclination to write much about this topic, which is less important to me than Barack Obama's support of legal infanticide.
But it is very important nonetheless, and so consider this an open thread about the big companies going boom.
Posted by pudge at September 17, 2008 08:23 AM | Email Thishttp://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306370789279709
Where is your "free market" now, Rand cult morons? Where is your "invisible hand?" Your "supply-side economics?"
Your policies have failed. Conservatism is a failure. The adults will take over now. You can continue to babble from your padded cells, like Tony Perkins in the last scene of "Psycho," "But . . . but . . .OBAMA KILLED BABIES!"
Please show me the Democrat Senators and Reps opposing and railing against this bail out.
They seem a little too pre-occupied with shackling the US economy to foreign oil to bother.
I'm inclined to think that it's time to let some of these things crash and go boom rather than setting precedent that they can run these monster's into the ground and have tax payers pick up the bill.
What's notable here is that both McCain and Obama are wrong. This is progressive ground that they have in common. And this is one of the reasons that conservatives only begrudgingly support McCain.
But make no mistake, it would be far worse under Obama. Obama would nationalize as many industries as possible. And that's far worse then McCain going soft.
The USA is not a place for the weak-kneed. Yous pays your $5 and yous takes your chances. Bankruptcy is an important part of the natural life cycle of bad decisions.
Need more evidence? Recall these reports that show how much Lehman Brothers was a part of the Algore carbon trading funding, and AGW Hysteria.
Given how poorly the Carbon Credits business did, even in a Marxist Sycophant laden place like the DNC convention in Denver, one has to wonder what kind of leadership at Lehman would have prompted allegiance to such foolishly poor investments. And that is exactly why Lehman should go out of business. Wall Street is no place for Leftist fantasy.
Posted by: Jeff B. on September 17, 2008 08:52 AMIf only the Democrats could see the threat of the new Russia. You know, the one that hides its poor economy by imperialist takeovers of Georgia and now the Arctic.
If only the House Democrats wouldn't play games with the drilling ban by passing a watered down version to placate the sheeples, only to be promised that the Senate would turn it down.
If only Obama wouldn't play games with the economy like he did with Iraq. Telling the Iraqis not to sign an agreement to bring the troops home until he is in office is mind boggling. How many troops will die because of his greed?
If only Obama would preach hold the fort, the economy isn't in freefall and he would sooth us sheeples that things will get better if we just held tight, instead of preaching complete failure.
If only ....
Posted by: swatter on September 17, 2008 08:53 AMAs for "shackling the US economy to foreign oil," the Republican oil whores are the ones killing off alternative energy development, not the Democrats. Nice try though.
Posted by: ivan on September 17, 2008 08:54 AM
Perhaps you should know what you are talking about *before* commenting.
Rand would have advocated for letting AIG and Lehman go bankrupt. Rand would never have agreed with Bush policy. And that's the whole problem. Bailouts for Wall Street are just as foolish as bailouts for Social Security.
Because the right is wrong doesn't automatically make the left correct.
Posted by: Jeff B. on September 17, 2008 08:56 AM* The AIG deal does not bail out any "rich buddies." In fact, the government takes 80 percent of the company. It is not giving anyone anything, except making sure CONSUMERS aren't left in the lurch.
* No failures we are seeing are the result of ANY conservative policies whatsoever.
* No one is killing off any alternative energy development.
* Infanticide is very real, and Obama did support keeping it legal.
* You are not an adult.
WE own Social Security, and it doesn't need a "bailout." It needs to raise the cap on earnings, and then whatever problem you SAY there is goes away.
As for AIG, hell yes I am in favor of letting it crash. But see, if you lot hadn't repealed Glass-Steagall and replaced it with Gramm-Leach-Bliley, we wouldn't be in this mess now, would we?
I looked at the roll call in the Senate. Every single GOP Senator voted for it, including McCain, and every single Democrat except for one, Fritz Hollings, voted no.
So the AIG failure and its subsequent socialization is the direct result of the failure of Republican governance. The voters will not reward you for it.
"Where is your "free market" now, Rand cult morons?" ~ Ivan the deplorable
The last person to call us that was "She who shall not be named" (but has 3 initials). Yes, her.
Posted by: Rick D. on September 17, 2008 09:12 AMAnd this is an illustrative example of the desperation in the Left. Ivan is reduced to a flailing ad hominem attack on Bush when in fact as this text shows, Bush and McCain are quite different.
Posted by: Jeff B. on September 17, 2008 09:15 AM* No, in fact, as you raise the cap on earnings, you also raise the benefits of those people when they retire, so you are just kicking the can down the road. Without decreases in BENEFITS, you cannot solve the problem.
* No, in fact, Gramm-Leach-Bliley has nothing whatsoever to do with creating this problem. On the contrary, it is allowing us to weather the storm more gracefully than we otherwise would: if not for Bank of America's ability to buy out some of these other banks, we'd be in much worse shape.
Jeff B., your comments are spot on. We should be thanking McCain for his hard work on this and other issues, and clamoring for him to finally be in a position of implementing his ideas as the Chief Executive.
"I looked at the roll call in the Senate. Every single GOP Senator voted for it, including McCain, and every single Democrat except for one, Fritz Hollings, voted no."
Ivan, what vote are you talking about here? Because Gramm-Leach-Bliley passed 90-8 in the Senate.
And Jeff B's point is well-taken. McCain expressed concern about these problems back in 2005, but the bill he co-sponsored was blocked in the banking committee by Chris Dodd. Who, incidentally, is ahead of only Barack Obama in terms of the money collected in contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac.
The stench of this crisis is all over the Obama campaign. One can only hope that somebody in the MSM will commit an act of actual journalism and report it acccurately.
Posted by: HT on September 17, 2008 09:47 AMIt would be folly to let all that fail.
Interestingly, I think you will find that AIG also wrote a substantial amount of credit guarantees....and those were the rub.
They also wrote huge amounts of commercial risk policies.
Yes, I was the home office financial risk guy at Aetna in the mid 70's, and was the owner of the pioneer software company for Wall Street trading of Mortgage Backed Securities.... worked with some 200 dealers and insurors, and even FHLMC, Bear, Goldman, Pain Webber, Lehman. So I am one of your financial guru readers.... I worked with many of the risks involved here.... but in the more pure and less gogo structured days. In another post below, I'll put my take on the mortgage mess from a year ago.
I just don't see this as a political issue.....any party in charge would come to the same decision.
Posted by: keb on September 17, 2008 10:05 AMWhat we know for sure is this: OhDrama did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to forestall ANY of this.
If he knows so much about how to fix the problem.... then why wasn't he fixing it before any of this crap ever happened? As the empty suit has proven, any moron can complain and point fingers AFTER the fact.
But the fact is that NOTHING OhDrama can say about this stuff now is believable. Because if he knows all this stuff NOW, then how come he didn't do anything about it say, a year ago? Or two?
Posted by: Hinton on September 17, 2008 10:06 AMI believe that Chuck Schumer, Charles Rangle among others led this "deal" for the AIG loan. According to CNN & CBS on air reporting last night. Not Bush or McCain as you claim.
Mike
Posted by: Mike on September 17, 2008 10:10 AMJust about everybody has seen the meltdown on Wall Street about the Sub-Prime mortgages.
It will cost a whole bunch of financial firms and pension plans worldwide an amount which might come to a trillion dollars.
Just how our Big Banks and Mortgage lenders got into this mess is quite a story. I had the opportunity to modernize the computer software and analytical methods in traded mortgage securities such as GNMA's/ FHLMC and FNMA's back in the early 80's. Heck, I even coached one of the big firm presidents when he arrived just out his MBA program in '83. He just screwed up his $20 million a year job by not watching the risk involved in borrowing 10 times the amount of actual equity capital backed by very risky sub-prime mortgages.
In the late 70's and thru the 80's the nation's thrift institutions got in trouble by making 30 year fixed rate loans which were backed by short term deposits. As interest rates on saving shot up well past 10%, the depositors pulled out their old 3% money and bought new CD's and money market funds. That left the S&Ls holding the bag on now unfunded long term loans yielding 6-7%. ( Holding the assets but not able to issue liabilities or equity to fund the balance sheet. )
The mortgage business needed a new model because disintermediation put about 12,000 thrift institutions out of business. So a lot of the financing moved off to Wall Street where loans were chopped into different maturity segments and sold to banks, insurers and pension plans that could match their investment needs to the array of selected maturities. As mortgage rates fell lower and lower, home borrowers got more credit capacity, but non-thrift lenders were less interested in those low rate traditional package deals. But something had to be done to take up the slack in mortgage money funding.
In recent years, the politicians pushed for even broader home ownership for people with sketchy credit, just as the newer generation of Wall Street packaging wizzards came up with the idea of making slices diced out along the default risk spectrum. They called the new things Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO).
Institution buyers could select high yield slices with lots of default risk, or stick with the lower yield safe stuff. The buyers were even little banks in Germany! Keep in mind that all of these packages got an overall credit rating of AAA. ( Companies like AIG issued some levels of credit guarantees on these packages. )
Well it wasn't. As world oil prices went up due to China's demand, and ethanol production started increasing our food costs, the housing boom kinda stopped. And those folks with poor credit were naturally the first to stop paying on loans where they had almost nothing down, and thus the home prices bubble just ended. But the piper got paid on Wall Street because these packages got leveraged by 10-1. Instead of having a 10% down 10% cushion, with that much leverage, a home price foreclosure rate of 1-2% wipes out the equity behind a leveraged CDO... Tumbling the whole structure, and frightening away all the prospective lenders.
Now we investors and homeowners must watch our big banks, thrifts, and brokerages twist in the wind while yet another investment device is created to replace the missing S&L's. It is not going to just be FNMA and FHLMC because they are not big enough, and actually, they are strung out on credit guarantees too.
( I really believe there was quite a gap between what senior management and regulators understood about all the structuring, and what the rocket scientists were creating in places on Wall Street and AIG. )
The credit crisis and the lack of oversight over government-subsidized lenders like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac occurred on the watch of George Bush, and many blame his economic team for their lack of oversight in the collapse. Barack Obama has made this point one of his major campaign themes, arguing that John McCain would provide more of the same failures that Bush did. However, what many do not recall is that Bush wanted to tighten oversight with a new regulatory board for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other government recipients for the express purpose of addressing bad loan practices -- and Democrats blocked it.
The New York Times reported this five years ago:(9-11-03)
The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.
The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.
The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.
This should have been a no-brainer, right? With hindsight, we can see that the Bush administration had accurately diagnosed the problem in the lending market and had a plan to address it. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reluctantly supported the plan. However, Democrats objected (emphases mine):
Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.
"These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."
Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.
"I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing," Mr. Watt said.
Maybe you should ... ah, never mind, you and ivan don't care about facts.
Posted by: pudge on September 17, 2008 10:36 AMCan you post a link to where Sen. Obama or Sen. McCain have claimed that they would nationalize industries? I've seen nothing of the sort from either candidate.
Menawhile the Hypocrisy Party (rumored to support Free Markets and "No Wall St. baliouts") has already nationalized three companies...Freddie Mac, Fannie Mac & AIG. Who's next to be snapped up by the nationalist Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson? Will it be WaMu, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, or Wells Fargo? Not a lot of companies left to take over in the vast wasteland known as the financial sector.
I haven't seen any plans announced to sell off any of these nationalized companies. In fact Freddie and Fannie has their CEO's replaced by Govt. employees. I'm having a hard time imagining Pres. Bush as the Gordon Gekko of the 00's.
Besides, Sarah Palin already believes Nationalism works just fine in Alaska, Can't imagine why she would not support it for the whole country.
There comes a point when regulation becomes so significant it is de facto nationalization. It is not unreasonable to say Obama wants to nationalize the credit and health and energy sectors.
Also, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae ALREADY WERE NATIONALIZED, as part of FDR's New Deal. They are privately owned, but ultimately the government is responsible for them.
And AIG will be sold off as soon as possible.
Democrats want to nationalize companies. Here is proof:
Maxin Waters, threatening to nationalize the oil companies.
Obama put Frank Raines, the disgraced CEO of Fannie on his campaign staff. Democrooks have their hands in all this.
Posted by: pbj on September 17, 2008 10:52 AMThe are "sponsored" by the Govt. (see 1968 Charter Act) but operated "independently" (despite the board being run by corrupt ex-politicians) and sold publicly traded shares on the stock market. I don't see the Dept. of Treasury, the SEC, or the Smithsonian selling shares on the stock market.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/574iglgp.asp
Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on September 17, 2008 11:04 AMLOL, like that's going to get anywhere. Liberals like Conservatives are elected from all ends of the spectrum. One member of the House of Representatives doesn't represent the entire party. Now a Gov. who believes in Nationalism, that's a much more powerful position and much more dangerous, especially if they are running for the VP slot.
I haven't seen any plans announced to sell off any of these nationalized companies.
That has been in pretty much every story about the AIG deal.
The are "sponsored" by the Govt. (see 1968 Charter Act) but operated "independently"
But were always considered to be backed by the federal government.
Acid Brain:
Pudge if it ain't socialism then what really is government redistribution of the means of production all about?
Um. It's not redistribution, not as commonly understood. That would be taking from one person to give to another. This is buying and selling.
These moves to defend the free world against financial collapse via national government management of private resources come directly from the Executive, not the Legislative branch. Get your groove on and visualize the appointees carrying out the policies.
That depends on who you ask. The Fed is at best quasi-executive. It's really an unconstitutional setup, as the Executive exercises almost no control over the Fed, and yet it is in the executive branch, and Article II says plainly that exectuive power is vested in the President. But the Fed system, too, is not a Republican invention.
If you want to get rid of the independent Fed, bucking 100 years of Democratic dogma, I'm sure you'll find a lot more allies here than on HA.
read then weep
Top Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008
1) Chris Dodd $133,900
2) John Kerry $111,000
3) Barack Obama $105,849
4) Hillary Clinton $75,550
Right now 401k funds are being raided to prop up the follies of millionaire CEOs -- who end up keeping their jobs!
Where is the fairness. The grasshoppers are raiding the ants, just like they did with Social Security. They raid it, wreck it, and then call the system "broken".
Where's McCain's Reform?
Where is Palin's voice against special interests?
I can hear a pin drop!!!
Posted by: John Bailo on September 17, 2008 11:12 AMThe problem with truth, it smacks you in the face everytime. I bet it's really hurting by now!
Put some ice on it.
Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on September 17, 2008 11:17 AMHere is the most popular article on WSJ about the AIG takeover. No where in the article does it say what the company will be broken up and sold under it's current Nationalized state. All they've done is taken it over and replaced the CEO (thankfully with someone who appears competent).
1. The top THREE layers of management are fired.
2. Top management on receives $1 per year salary until the loans are repaid.
3. No participation in stock or other ownership until the company is restored (prevents finagling to boost stock artificially).
Posted by: John Bailo/Angry Right on September 17, 2008 11:27 AMThat's funny, I used Campaign Contributions to prove a point some months back to demonstrate a point and you called me a conspiracy theorist. Funny how true you make it sound when it's you using the same set of facts. You can't have it both ways Army M/V.
Besides Army M/V, as a member of the Hypocrisy Party the official stance is that Campaign Contributions have absolutely no effect on a persons voting record. Why is this suddenly different? Hypocrisy at it's finest.
Here is the most popular article on WSJ about the AIG takeover. No where in the article does it say what the company will be broken up and sold under it's current Nationalized state. All they've done is taken it over and replaced the CEO (thankfully with someone who appears competent).
What part of "This loan will facilitate a process under which AIG will sell certain of its businesses in an orderly manner" do you not understand?
Time for a laugh. (-:
The day before the Democratic National Convention Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) went on Meet the Press and told Tom Brokaw:
I'm, I'm, I'm investing in something I believe in. I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels. ...
Ahhhh, Nancy do you know where Natural gas comes from and what it's made of?
Sell it when and to whom? Vague promises from a Nationalist Treasury Secretary don't mean squat.
The UK nationalized Northern Rock bank in February saying the same thing...guess what, the Govt. still owns it.
The first link is from 2006, and talks about how Spitzer's "case" against Greenberg fell apart. He just used cases like this to propel him into the Governorship.
Spitzer forces Greenberg from AIG
The NY Sun wants Greenberg back in charge of AIG.
NY Sun says Bring Back Greenberg
Here is a NY Sun article from 2005 that talks about the Spitzer persecution of Greenberg that resulted in Greenberg being forced out.
Posted by: Bill H on September 17, 2008 11:52 AMYou people are so full of poop your eyes are brown. Heil Hitler!!!
Posted by: Fuhkengroovin on September 17, 2008 11:53 AMHell has frozen over because I agree with you on all counts. But the Bush administration is dedicated to cronyism and to kleptocracy, and McCain is just as bad, so don't expect any help from them.
Posted by: ivan on September 17, 2008 11:53 AMJust wondering out loud if the crooked CEO of AIG is going to be an economic advisor on the Obama campaign just like crooked Fannie Mae CEO Frank Raines
Posted by: Just Wondering on September 17, 2008 11:56 AMThis admission that, since 2007, this has been a do nothing Congress is truly honest and astonishing.
Where have these Democrats been for the last two years? What have they done to head off any of these issues?
Have they just been sitting on their hands because an economy in turmoil is perceived to be better for them during an election year?
McCain is right, these Democrats are putting their political aspirations ahead of their country.
Posted by: SouthernRoots on September 17, 2008 12:01 PMThis whole mess wouldn't of happened if the regulators appointed by the Bush Admin. had actually enforced the laws they were entrusted to enforce.
Meanwhile Elliott Spitzer was actually doing his job...prosecuting people who broke the law:
The company (AIG) also came under the glare of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for its role in bid-rigging with broker Marsh & McLennan Cos. (MMC ), which led to the ouster of Hank's son Jeffrey as CEO there. AIG admitted no wrongdoing, but two of its executives plead guilty and left the company.
Someone is looking to go to JAIL!
Then why did two execs plead guilty? Doesn't it seem odd to enter into funny loans with a company where your son is the CEO and then lie about them on your books. Seriously did you even read the BW article I linked?
Surprise, AIG was cooking the books to boost it's stock price. This seems to be a very common occurrence under the Bush Administration (*cough* Enron / Arthur Andersen *cough* WaMu / Bear Sterns / Lehman Brothers *cough*).
Enlighten us - where DOES natural gas come from?
You seem to think it is a derivative of oil...
Do you think natural gas is "dirty"?
Posted by: Fuhkengroovin on September 17, 2008 12:39 PMUmmm, sure if you want to interpret it that way one could argue Gov. Palin has already promised to go to war with Russia.
and not because it's good for investors like you and me
How do you know? The economy thrived in the Clinton years when the Capital Gains Tax was higher, and the economy is doing a whole lot worse now that it's been lowered. Coincidence? =P
It's all about hurting people for the sake of hurting them.
LOL, then Pres. Bush is hurting the unlucky people who lost their Wall Street jobs courtesy of deregulation enacted by the GOP, Bush Admin's piss-poor enforcement of remaining regulation, and CEO's who were more interested in upping the stock price than keeping the company fiscally sound. Those ordinary folks are the ones truly suffering because THEY DON'T HAVE JOBS anymore because the comapnies they worked for no longer exist through no fault of their own.
The only job Elliot Spitzer wqas doing was getting a blow job.
Posted by: Spitzer's Schnitzel on September 17, 2008 12:42 PMEnlighten us - where DOES natural gas come from?
It's a fossil fuel. Pelosi directly implied it wasn't.
You seem to think it is a derivative of oil...
No, nothing he said implies that at all.
Posted by: pudge on September 17, 2008 12:44 PMGezzz if your going to try and tie GW with Enron. Do a little research about the owner/ceo and Clinton. They had a 8 year happy time and gave much money to Clinton & Ron Brown.
Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on September 17, 2008 12:45 PMAnd then, after raping the country, those CEO's join the Obama campaign as advisors.
Posted by: Democrook on September 17, 2008 12:46 PM*for those of you not familiar with the uptick rule, it requires that a short sale can only take place at a price that is HIGHER than the immediately preceding price. This was meant to discourage driving stocks into the ground. The rule was eliminated last year.
Posted by: Bill H on September 17, 2008 01:56 PMTruly we could go back as far as the New deal or the Great Society, but this particular set of dominoes was set in motion by Carter and his demand that institutions make it easier for minorities to get loans. It wasn't that they were undeserving of the American dream, but it WAS that Carter changed the rules of how that could happen.
Clinton continued and expanded that. THEN there was the advent of the net, changing rules of investment, daytraders and short selling.
How many of you have taken advantage of "no interest/no payments" for X amount of time? It's the same thing. However, many of those that took those great rates, that believed "no interest/no payments" either didn't undertand that payment in FULL was still due or they deceived themselves into believing they could afford more than was actually true. These companies, this country has leveraged the "no interest/no payment" thing for over TWO DECADES. It had to implode and it has.
Social Security and Medicare are next. Democrats have been borrowing from it for years with "no interest/no payments". A business or an institution can only float for so long deferring THEIR interest and payments until something has to collapse.
Collapse it has.
The democrats get so angst-ridden about blame that they want to "do something!" and that something usually interferes with the natural ebb and flow and normal corrections.
They should probably take up gardening. Over-tending is as deadly to a garden as undertending... and NOTHING grows indefinitely.
BUT, it's important to remember that the stock market is NOT the economy. AND that McCain is right: the fundamentals of the ECONOMY are strong.
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on September 17, 2008 02:49 PMThe additional oversight of Fannie/Freddie that McCain and Bush recommended years ago might have prevented some of this mess. Not all of it. It is simply unconscionable that Obama blames this on Bush, when he's been trying to reform Fannie/Freddie for years and it's been blocked by Democrats.
Posted by: Palouse on September 17, 2008 03:18 PMHow about this for a topic? I'd like to read comments from folks that would argue that redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor is the direction for America.
Barack Obama claims he will cut taxes to 95% of Americans. More than 33% of Americans today pay no income taxes. Translated for you liberals, that means they pay zero dollars in personal income taxes. So if we are to accept Obama's words, repeated lately over and over, he plans to either NOT cut their taxes further (I'd like details how he would), or he plans to take money from the top 5% and redistribute it, not only to the 62% who pay taxes and will get a reduction, but he will write a check from the federal government to the 33% who pay zero taxes.
How ethical is it for a candidate to intentionally place voters into a conflict of interest, counting on them to vote for him and in return, be given other people's money?
I know, that like Bill Clinton's lie of a middle class tax cut to get elected in 1992 that became a massive tax increase once he was elected, that Obama's promise will certainly explode if he has a Democrat Congress. But on principle, what of these promises to "buy" the votes of those already most dependent on a growing government with higher taxes on the wealthy and a cash payout for their support in November? Never mind that Obama has added a myriad of new spending programs to ripen his offer. Has our republic devolved into the thing that our Founding Fathers feared so much - a pure democracy with elected representatives that will give the people anything they want for their vote? Do the "have-lessers" now have the votes to simply take what they want from those who do the bulk of the work, investing, and contributing in this country?
And how long can any American expect this nation to survive once those who work less, abandon eduction, and already have become dependent on others learn that they can just vote to take more, or all of what belongs to others?
Here is a great series on Obama's vision for America:
The Audacity of Socialism
So now it's wrong for people to make money out of the stock market? Geez Michelle, here I was the whole time thinking that you were pro-free market.
So you should outlaw short selling? How very anti-free market of you.
Looks like Soros Inc. took quite loss on Lehman Bros.
So we should eliminate people making profits off the misfortunes of others? I assume the rule your talking about is Naked Short Selling, do correct me if you feel that's NOT what you are talking about. It would take an obscene amount of money to even try to do what you are implying, even then it's quite a risky bet.
I see no reason to stop people from ponying up real money and placing a bet that the (now former) CEO of WaMu made incredibly stupid financial decisions that would cause the companies stock price to collapse. I see no reason why an individual should not make money off it as long as they have real money to cover their bet.
BTW, I live in King County thank you very much.
Claimed Levi Johnston was a rapist by Alaskan Law. When confronted to prove it, he selectivey quoted a sentence of rape law when in fact when the entire text reveals the intercourse was perfectly legal in Alaska.
Claimed Seattle Times endorsed Bush in 2004.
Makes stuff up out of thin air, no facts, no proof.
It sounds to me like you don't know what a short sale is, what the uptick rule (that was in effect until summer of 2007) does and why it was a rule to begin with. Was there short selling prior to 2007? Of course there was. If the uptick rule is put back into effect there will still be short selling.
Posted by: Bill H on September 17, 2008 05:54 PMIt would have been nice if the Democrats listened to the Republicans in 2003 rather than filibustering the whole Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae thing.
Or listened to John McCain back in 2006 to head off this debacle. Once again, you Slavery Party baby killers decided that politics and power trump all, society and economy be damned.
Cato the vacuous wrote:
So you should outlaw short selling? How very anti-free market of you.
Naked shorts are illegal. And the regulators regularly ignore it for larger firms. And of course the mouthpiece of your Slavery Party, the New York Times, is the leading cheerleader to continue naked short selling.
Yet another case of you Slavers ignoring laws because they don't directly benefit you... How typical!
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on September 17, 2008 06:13 PMYeah yeah, I can already hear the whines of the obfuCATOr, ivan and the rest of the loyal comrades.
I'm over it, AHEAD of it.
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on September 17, 2008 07:06 PMHow much longer till McCain or Obama recognize that we need to abolish the fed and return to sound money?
Posted by: lysander on September 18, 2008 05:14 PM